Flash fiction (233 words), written for the I Am A Writer Facebook group’s weekly flash fiction prompts.
Far on the outskirts of the city, past the last farm before the tracks, you can see the glow of the city. It only comes out after the sun has set, and its light graces the other side of the planet. The suburban glow radiates out and upwards towards the stars hundreds of light-years away as if trying to shine back at the great balls of plasma in the sky saying “yes we too can shine bright in the night.”
On the outskirts of town, the suburban glow is like a blanket covered halfway up your face. Halfway obscuring the world around you as you hide beneath it in the dark, while the other half gazes outwards towards the unknown. The stars above, so far away that our small human minds cannot even comprehend their vast distances, are covered by the suburban glow, only the brightest powerful enough to shine through and remind us that we are but one point in a vast cosmos. The other half of the sky, the side not obscured, out here is full of those pinpricks of light, each one a humbling reminder of our faint existence.
The suburban glow shines all night, waiting until the comfort of the sun comes out shielding our eyes of the vast empty universe, only to glow again when the sun comforts our other half. Shine bright suburban glow, shine bright.
